A little help with my theater setup

[ryjam282]

Attached is a diagram of the living room in my new house that I am closing on tomorrow. Now, the furniture in it is not set in stone and can be moved.

Please let me know what you guys think would be the best setup for the 7.1 surround home theater please......



TV is a 57" Widescreen Hitachi
Surround sound is Yamaha HTR-5790 7.1 surround

Please move things around as you see fit. I greatly appreciate all your help in advance.


Ryan

[PAT.P]

Attached is a diagram of the living room in my new house that I am closing on tomorrow. Now, the furniture in it is not set in stone and can be moved.

Please let me know what you guys think would be the best setup for the 7.1 surround home theater please......



TV is a 57" Widescreen Hitachi
Surround sound is Yamaha HTR-5790 7.1 surround

Please move things around as you see fit. I greatly appreciate all your help in advance.


Ryan

Are you using towers for the front and back! To me the couch is way to far out !I would bring it in at least to the 15 feet range and back speaker at each corner of couch !Where the sub?A room this size I would have two! My living room is 26x16 (running towers for front and a pair of 24" 3way speaker ,2 sub and on back wall pair of dipole effects speaker !Pat.P

[ryjam282]

I am not using towers at the present time. Do you recommend them? I have Infinity speakers right now but would like some recommendations on some towers if possible. Towers for the back if pretty much out of the question as they will be mounted on the wall above a sliding glass door that opens to the patio. The sub, I forgot to put it in, will probably be by the TV. How does 2 of them sound? I have no problem getting 2 if necessary. So, moving the couch would be a good idea, thanks for the reply. A little more info if possible, thanks.

Ryan

[PAT.P]

I am not using towers at the present time. Do you recommend them? I have Infinity speakers right now but would like some recommendations on some towers if possible. Towers for the back if pretty much out of the question as they will be mounted on the wall above a sliding glass door that opens to the patio. The sub, I forgot to put it in, will probably be by the TV. How does 2 of them sound? I have no problem getting 2 if necessary. So, moving the couch would be a good idea, thanks for the reply. A little more info if possible, thanks.

Ryan

You do have a big room and to my opinion if you dont move couch you would need a good tower (mine are Dahlquist QX9 and added the Dahlquist QX100sa to add more bass with my Paradigm PS1000 one on right the other on left side ) these really rock when music and movies are on!If you are in Canada go to the AUDIOSHOP website they have the sub like mine at half price 299.99 and they also have the towers QX8A on sale at 649.99 (htese tower sound as good as my QX 9!The tower and another sub will fill your room with a warm feeling and enhance quality of your sound system! Check out www.audioshop.on.ca ! Marc Hallam is great to deal with ,knows is stuff and always honest ! They use to sell Paradigm but said the Dalquist sounded better and price was cheaper.They sell Energy also these are also great speaker.Try the couch there if you get towers your ears will tell you!!! Pat.P

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

Attached is a diagram of the living room in my new house that I am closing on tomorrow. Now, the furniture in it is not set in stone and can be moved.

Please let me know what you guys think would be the best setup for the 7.1 surround home theater please......



TV is a 57" Widescreen Hitachi
Surround sound is Yamaha HTR-5790 7.1 surround

Please move things around as you see fit. I greatly appreciate all your help in advance.


Ryan

There are quite a few things in your setup I definately would change. Starting from the front of the room, and working my way back.

Your front speakers and television setup appears to be off center. This will make the imaging from your front speakers appear onesided, as you will have reflections from the side walls arriving at two different times. I would center that out, so both main speakers see the same distance to their respective walls. The will ensure that the front soundstage is balanced.

Your side speakers are placed in front of your listening position. That means all surround effects will be coming from in front of you, instead of the rear. I would move the couch forward so I could properly place these speakers 2-3ft behind, and to the sides of the listening position. This would place effects designed for the surround speakers in their proper place, behind the listening position.

Your center rear speakers are on the backwall, but that is too far from the L/R surrounds for a proper blend. I would move them forward that four extra feet to make them closer to the L/R surrounds. The center rear should be an extension of the surround, not an event all by themselves.

I think your setup is too scattered to blend well. I would tighten up the speakers placement considerably and not use so much of that room.

This is all I have time to cover, but as I think of other things I'll post more.

[ryjam282]

Thanks for the reply Terrence. The reason for the TV being to the right side like that is because the font door is right next to it. Should I just move that one front speaker to the other side of the door? Will it make a difference if one front side speaker is farther away from the center then the other or should I move the center speaker to the absolute center of the room and not worry about the TV? Give me some input on that.

As far as the side speakers, they should be just slightly behind the listening position? I can move them back, that isn't a problem at all.

Now, the rear speakers, how far are the recommended to be away from the listening position? I know they should be around 2-4 apart from each other as well right? The reason I have them on that back wall, is because it is a sliding glass door and I was going to mount them right above it.

Thanks a lot for the advice, I appreciate it. If you could continue on, I would be very greatful.

Also, the room has vaulted ceilings and is all tile. Will that be a problem with the bass or sound quality at all?

[jeskibuff]

The first thing you ought to do is redraw your picture. The dimensions that you give are not proportional to your diagram. The 4' section should be 1/6 of the 24' section, yet it appears to be almost a half of it. The closer you draw it to scale, the better advice you can get from people, although there are some glaring problems with the setup, as have already been mentioned.

[kfalls]

There are quite a few things in your setup I definately would change. Starting from the front of the room, and working my way back.

Your front speakers and television setup appears to be off center. This will make the imaging from your front speakers appear onesided, as you will have reflections from the side walls arriving at two different times. I would center that out, so both main speakers see the same distance to their respective walls. The will ensure that the front soundstage is balanced.

Your side speakers are placed in front of your listening position. That means all surround effects will be coming from in front of you, instead of the rear. I would move the couch forward so I could properly place these speakers 2-3ft behind, and to the sides of the listening position. This would place effects designed for the surround speakers in their proper place, behind the listening position.

Your center rear speakers are on the backwall, but that is too far from the L/R surrounds for a proper blend. I would move them forward that four extra feet to make them closer to the L/R surrounds. The center rear should be an extension of the surround, not an event all by themselves.

I think your setup is too scattered to blend well. I would tighten up the speakers placement considerably and not use so much of that room.

This is all I have time to cover, but as I think of other things I'll post more.

I agree with Terrence and if you can make the stated changes, the system would be close to ideal. But this is the real world with rooms you also have to lived in. As far as the rears are concerned, if you have enough power (I think the Yamaha has 110W) to drive them adequately and your receiver has adequate distance/delay adjustment I think you'll be OK. Many people go cheap on the rears, but with DD/DVD-Audio/SACD providing full range surround channels, cheap speakers will sound just that---CHEAP and ruin the experience. Definitely move the couch and Lazyboy forward and adjust the front R/C/L according to couch placement. As long as center is equidistant from R/L I think you'll be OK here as well. If you can center everything without confrontation from the wife, do it now before she settles on this configuration. Sides need to be just to the rear and above standing ear-level.

Which Hitachi 57" do you have? I have the 57S715, which looks great, but you give up a lot of cabinet, nothing to place the center speaker on. With a 42lb center, I've temporarily placed it on a stand in front of the TV until I can find an appropriate way to mount above the screen. Anyone else have this problem? I'd be interested in your solutions.

[nightflier]

I have a little trouble getting a good idea of the layout as well, but here are two other options you could try:

1. Put the widescreen on the right wall and go wide with the layout rather than long. This may sound very different, but could improve this a bit over what you have.

2. Put the widescreen on the diagonal in the bottom right corner. You could then have more distance to work with and more walls to hang you speakers on.

Again, these are just suggestions to try, and not necessarily optimal. I know that there is more to consider when remodeling than just the sound. I've been looking to buy a new home, and I am astounded at how bad the living rooms are for a good surround sound setup. It seems like all the model homes have their speakers in the ceiling right above the TV. When I ask the agents about this, they assure me that they are working with top-notch sound companies (yeah, i'd like to have a chat with them....).

Anyhow, just some other ideas to try.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

I am with Jeskibuff on this one. A re-draw would go a long way to understanding this layout. I am quite frankly confused about several things in this current layout.

[ryjam282]

I will give another redraw for you tomorrow morning. I just received my new couches from JC Penney and had to rearrange a bit. More like what Nightflier was talking about in his #2 above. I will try and get a better proportioned pic for you in the morning and we will see what we can do. Thanks for all the replies thus far.

[ryjam282]

Here is the new one. Let me know what you guys think.


Kfalls, the Hitachi I have is the 57uwx20b. It is about 3 years old.

Terrence, Kfalls, Jeski, please keep the input coming, thanks a ton you guys are great.


Ryan

[RJW1138]

I see some Spinal-Tap'ish hilarity ensuing... ;-)

[Lensman]

Here is the new one. Let me know what you guys think.

Ryan

You mention a front door near the TV, but don't have it in the drawing. I also don't know how tall the window along the rear speaker wall is, or the dimensions of the furniture. So I'm going to make a rough guess on these. Here's what I'm thinking:

Put blinds or equivalent in the window and close them, so the window looks normal from the outside and light is blocked from coming inside. Then place a floor-to-ceiling curtain across your rear speaker wall to hide the window on the inside and give your room more of a theater-style look. If you know someone who can sew, you can buy the fabric and make one for about $150-$200.

Place your TV along the center of this wall with the main on either side. Place the sub in the corner of your choice. Given your TV's depth, you should have enough space to center one section of your couch about 86" (1.5X the 57" width of your screen).

Place the left and right surrounds along the left and right walls parallel to the couch.

This should leave you enough space to place the rear surrounds on stands about 18" behind the couch without blocking the entrance to your stairs. As you say they're small, you might be able to mount them on the ceiling and point them down if you can run the wire.

Get a coffee table and end table and use the other couch section and La-Z-Boy to make a second seating area.

This would give you the room symmetry needed for best performance and provide reasonable spacing between your TV, speakers and seating area. It would also give you a separate seating area for entertaining, reading, etc. I've attached a sketch of how things could look. Hope this helps.